voided eye is murderous!"

In "Lucrece" (l. 540) we read:

"Here with a cockatrice' dead-killing eye
He rouseth up himself, and makes a pause."

Once more,[394] in "Twelfth Night" (iii. 4), Sir Toby Belch affirms:
"This will so fright them both that they will kill one another by the
look, like cockatrices." It has also been affirmed that this animal
could not exercise this faculty unless it first perceived the object of
its vengeance; if first seen, it died. Dryden has alluded to this
superstition:

"Mischiefs are like the cockatrice's eye,
If they see first they kill, if seen, they die."

[394] See "Cymbeline," ii. 4; "Winter's Tale," i. 2.

Cockatrice was a popular phrase for a loose woman, probably from the
fascination of the eye.[395] It appears, too, that basilisk[396] was the
name of a huge piece of ordnance carrying a ball of very great weight.
In the following passage in "Henry V." (v. 2), there is no doubt a
double allusion--to pieces of ordnance, and to the fabulous creature
already described:

"The fatal balls of murdering basilisks."

[395] Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p 173.

[396] Dyce's "Glossary," p. 29; see "1 Henry IV.," ii. 3, "of
basilisks, of cannon, culverin."

_Colt._ From its wild tricks the colt was formerly used to designate,
according to Johnson, "a witless, heady, gay youngster." Portia mentions
it with a quibble in "The Merchant of Venice" (i. 2), referring to the
Neapolitan prince. "Ay, that's a colt, indeed." The term "to colt"
meant to trick, or befool; as in the phrase in "1 Henry IV." (ii. 2):
"What a plague mean ye to colt me thus?" Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps[397]
explains the expression in "Henry VIII." (i. 3), "Your colt's tooth is
not cast yet," to denote a love of youthful pleasure. In "Cymbeline"
(ii. 4) it is used in a coarser sense: "She hath been colted by him."

[397] "Handbook Index to Shakespeare."

_Crocodile._ According to fabulous accounts the crocodile was the most
deceitful of animals; its tears being proverbially fallacious. Thus
Othello (iv. 1) says:

"O devil, devil!
If that the earth could teem with woman's tears,
Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.--
Out of my sight!"

We may also compare the words of the queen in "2 Henry VI." (iii. 1):

"Henry my lord is cold in great affairs,
Too full of foolish pity; and Gloster's show
Beguiles him, as the mo